Art Barbara is a skinny, anxious high schooler in 1980s New England who founds a club for people to attend the funerals of strangers. He befriends Mercy Brown, a cool older woman who takes photographs of the deceased and possesses a strange knowledge of local folklore. The narrative is framed as Art’s memoir, which Mercy has edited with snarky, handwritten marginalia that disputes his memories. Their decades-long friendship centers on Art’s deteriorating health and his growing suspicion that Mercy is a parasitic supernatural being feeding on his vitality.
Readers who enjoy unreliable narrators and meta-fictional storytelling will find this a detailed study of lifelong insecurity and co-dependency. The book appeals to horror fans interested in non-traditional vampire mythology and the ambiguity of memory. It provides a look at the punk rock scene of the eighties and nineties while forcing the reader to weigh Art’s paranoia against Mercy’s biting corrections. One walks away questioning whether the monsters in our lives are literal predators or simply the people who witness our slowest declines.
- Published
- 2022
- Language
- EN
